Complicity
by Salome Sensei
Summary: Oneshots and drabbles centered on Izumi and Sig. Love, angst, and commitment.
1. Complicity

Author's Note: I love Izumi/Sig and needed to give them some fic time, especially Sig POV. Originally written for LJ comm fma_fic_contest. Placed 3rd, making me VERY happy. :3

Complicity

He didn't often give his opinion. Not in words. What needed to be communicated between them was always done without what he experienced as excess, often in questions she would ask and he would answer in words that were few yet sincere. He could always trust her questions were needful; she could always trust his answers were truthful. The rest? Murmured words of affection and intimacy when work was done and she would allow him to hold her—for moments or hours, depending on her mood: everything and nothing could be said and understood and held close to the heart. And there were other forms of communication as well, from passing nods of acknowledgment to protective grunts to a well-cooked meal shared in silence by candlelight.

Izumi didn't demand he become more expressive, just as Sig didn't demand she become less volatile. You can't change a leopard's spots. And if you could, why would you? He cherished the woman he married, the woman who married him, exactly as she was. And he felt cherished in return. What outsiders and even close friends saw as yin and yang, opposites brought together to complement one another, they experienced as like to like. Yes, he was immense and she was small, but both were strong-willed and strong-bodied. He worked with knifes on animal flesh while she trained with her hands, but both could break bones and bring down an enemy with equal ease. He was more likely to remain in the background, cool and observant, as his Izumi leapt forward, full of heat and action, but love and protectiveness fueled both equally. Perfectly.

And the child? Again, there was difference but mostly sameness. Vocal, exuberant Izumi shared the good news with all who would listen, relished her pregnancy, and planned for everything from the earliest days to the far future. "She'll be an inventor." "He'll look just like you." "He'll be a builder." "She'll be so beautiful." Quiet, mellow Sig listened, smiling, sharing her excitement in his own more passive way, entranced by Izumi's words and her glow. She spent many hours during those months sitting in his lap, his big hands around her, resting on her growing belly. He'd nuzzle her neck from behind, and she'd lose her place in her unending narrative of their lives. "Oh Sig," she'd say with a laugh.

Laughter was not entirely gone from their lives now, nor was touching, or the ways in which they were different but mostly alike. Izumi was still rash, outspoken, fiercely demanding and fiercely protective. Sig was still…Sig. They still belonged to one another. Fully. And there was the sharing of grief over the child that never was, the absence of new life in their lives, a presence that never materialized.

As for the other? It was the one place Sig had truly failed her, failed them both; the one place he knew well that she felt she had failed both him and herself. And their child. Had he known…ah, but he had known. In his passive way, he condoned her experimentation, knew entirely what she was contemplating. With the same determined energy she used to plan for their baby's life, she planned for that transmuted rebirth. And he pretended he did not know. Worked late in the butcher shop. Spent time with friends when she asked to be alone. Napped. Ignored. He was complicit.

Now, he ground his teeth in the night. He relished the feel of the knife severing sinew and bone far too much. And he hovered over his wife. Of course, he had reason: she had lost so much of herself to the fire she had walked into…alone. When she would choke and cough, vomiting blood that was wrung from within her to temper and bond their souls ever more tightly, Sig held her. When she took that last step, he did not stop her, perhaps could not have stopped her. Nor did he share the risks she took. But his love, then and now, was absolute. Was that enough? No one can keep another from risking life in the pursuit of dreams, even when one sees the nightmare take shape as if one has hammered its form with one's own hands. There was blood on both of their hands, now and forever, and he couldn't wish it any other way.


	2. Empty Embrace

Author's Note: This one is anime-focused on the night the child Wrath sleeps in Izumi and Sig's home. Though I generally prefer the manga to the anime, the child Wrath character is a heartwrencher for me, and I wanted to give him, and Izumi, air. Originally written for the LJ Community FMA_fic_contest; placed second (yay!).

Dedication: To any mother who has lost a child, for any reason. I cannot envision surviving it, and yet women must, and do.

Empty Embrace

Where does responsibility begin and end? Child and not-child, you belong to me and yet do not. I created you with all of the best and worst of myself, the highest and the most base of motives. You are no more a monster than I am, and if I teach others that accountability is one of the most important traits for those who would learn alchemy—or simply live in harmony with the world and oneself—then I must be held accountable. I must take responsibility for you.

The first moment I held your shaggy, shaking form in my arms as you sobbed the tears of the gravely wronged and the wrongly born, I felt the terrible emptiness of our connection. I longed to be filled, even for a fraction of a second, filled as I was when I first held my babe after giving him birth. He was a tiny, perfect product of so much love, so much confidence, so much faith. He had a scent I will never forget, a fragrance of innocence and idealism. Selfishly, I wanted to recapture that aroma I have never forgotten, fall into and live within it. I wanted the memory made flesh, to fill the hole inside me that runs so much deeper that lost organs and broken promises.

But this is not, could never be about what I want. Such self-indulgence and self-delusion simply deepen the hollowness and bring me to truths that are humankind's unmaking. As I inhaled the cool tang of your creation, I knew that I had infused you with the seeds of egotism and barrenness and dissolution. And such longing that it howls its name deafeningly.

As I should be, I am undone by you, wild boy who does and does not belong to me. How best am I to bear the bittersweet awfulness of your presence? Like everything else in life, it must simply be done.

Sig—he who is far less your father than I am your mother and yet bears the terrible truths as a better partner than a transgressor like me deserves—holds me close as my thoughts tangle and spin. You sleep in the spare room that should have belonged to that other you, and already I am aware of what must be done. Sig murmurs absolute trust into my ear in his words of affection, and I embrace him, both physically and emotionally, as the one real proof of good in the world. "I love you," I whisper into the darkness.


	3. Ache

Author's Note: 100 words of Izumi's pain, written for the prompt "Change" at LJ's **Fandomwords100**. First time I've visited FMA in a while. I do love Izumi/Sig so.

Ache

Izumi Curtis was an expert in pain. Muscle pulls and bruises from hard training were trophies. Illness was endurable. Loss was simply a part of life. But her baby's death had hit her fast and low, a deeper agony than she thought she could survive. Her choices led to worse torture, embodied by internal organs twisted into knots that echoed the tangle of her emotions. She knew the anguish would never lessen, never change. And yet, each time she folded herself into Sig's strong, unrelenting embrace, she knew a forgiveness that both hurt and soothed like nothing else in life.


	4. Pledge

Author's Note: A tiny bit of Sig/Izumi. Just a 100-word challenge with the prompt "catch."

Pledge

Sig wakes with a start. Izumi isn't in bed. His arm reaching to find a cool, empty place startles him from sleep. But he knows it's all right. When his wife tells him she loves him each night, it's a pledge to remain alive, to let him forgive her, even if she can't forgive herself.

Izumi stands before the open window, hugging herself and swaying, gently, side to side. Her throat catches as she quietly sobs. Sig watches, and waits. She won't talk about it, but he understands. All he needs is to hear that "I love you" every night.


	5. Robots

**Author's Note**:Written for the prompt "weakness" at LJ's FMA-fic-contest.

**Robots**

No one knows Sig Curtis dreams of robots. Cartoonish hulking monsters without knees or elbow joints. Small, hollow eyes and pinching hands. They don't chase him; they just lumber on while he watches.

Throwing off the covers on the warm night, he sits up in bed, remembering himself at age five, chubby finger pointing to a robot toy in a shop window and bouncing on his heels in excitement. It's boxy and silver-shiny, its rivets painted red and tiny rectangular slits for eyes with emptiness beneath. How it dwarfs the little plastic soldiers arrayed around it in display! If he had it in his hands, if he wound the key, would it spark and buzz? Can it walk, too? He looks up to his father with the silent, pleading eyes of an indulged child. _Please please please please please?_ His father's meaty hand tousles his hair. "Maybe for your birthday." Disappointment, yes, but such love in Papa's eyes as he sees them reflected in the picture window. They walk on, heels clacking on the pavement, the church where they hasten to Sunday services visible at the end of the block. "My big boy. You take after your Papa. We Curtises are big, strong men, stronger than any robot." Why did he say that, just then? How did he always muster such absolute confidence, such absolute faith?

Sig has faith. He did grow big, like his father said he would. And strong. He never got that robot toy, but he made his own of cans and cardboard. Even now, he sometimes plays childhood games, whacking through meat and bone with a stiff, mighty chop of his cleaver. Lying back down, facing the open window, his mind turns to the little Elric brothers, Edward's automail limbs, Alphonse's hollow armor shell. _What is it about robots?_ By ten he was stronger than any of his friends. Muscled even before puberty.

He rolls over and watches his wife sleep. In the darkness, he follows her slow, even breathing, her soft snores. He makes out her dreadlocked tresses like slender, quiet snakes on the pillow around her. How good she is at protecting herself, and others. They've both always been good at using their bodies to belie their insecurities. That much they both understand, and so nothing needs to be said about the baby, the alchemy, the lost health and the lost little life. The weakness.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight and sees sparks, like a toy robot he never owned.


	6. Forgiveness

May 2011

Note: I haven't written Izumi/Sig in a long time. It's the same thing I seem to need always to do with them: deal with sadness and mourning and love. Just a tidbit written for lj comm fanfic-bakeoff's "ouch" prompt: 100 words of Izumi POV, 100 words of Sig, and a 20-word coda.

Forgiveness

_iThere are many ways to be alive in the world, to be part of it. And many living deaths._

_How many nights will I startle awake, not knowing what tore me from sleep. Is it you, my child, coming to me in blind dreams, ache without form and without end?_

_Each time I come to myself in the dark with the man I love resting beside me, I gasp, struggle to keep still. I shove my fist into my mouth, stifle my cries. Forgive me, my child, lost not once but twice. Forgive me, Sig, who must endure my endurance._

There are many ways to be alive in the world, to be part of it. And I will not lose my Izumi to a living death.

How many nights will she startle awake, assuming I am still asleep? Is she thinking of our child, the baby that was not meant to be ours?

Each time she comes to herself in the dark as I lie beside her, I hear her gasp, feel her struggle to keep still. I bite my tongue, stifle my cries. Forgive me, my Izumi, for allowing you to lose our ill-fated child not once but twice.

"Love," I murmur, and rise to take her gently into my strong embrace so we can mourn, and live, together.


End file.
